Getting over DH affair. Onward and upwards?

[MummyIsMagic79]

Hi

Can't link to my old thread as I'm on my phone, but when I was 35 weeks pregnant, I discovered my DH had been having an affair with my friend. It lasted 5/6 weeks.

I was devastated and threw him out. It almost broke me, and I was distraught. I worship/ped him and he is the love of my life.

Fast forward to now. My DS is 15 days old today. We are all living together and DH and I are working hard on our marriage.

He is totally ashamed and broken up about what he did. He's done everything I have asked him to. Passwords, phone, called OW while I was there, been to std clinic etc.

I have met with OW for first time. It was Thurs this week. Strangely I felt nothing. Was a 45 min conversation. She just seemed pathetic and small.

The problem I have, is obviously trust. Please can anyone advise me on how to regain it.

We have Shirley Glass's book and have been to Relate. I am just struggling. Torturing myself with the fact that he might still be seeing her. Really anxious about it. He's doing everything to reassure me. He's so loving now, and our marriage is more open and happier than for a year.

He even went and had the tattoo we'd been planning to get together, they are matching, though I've not had mine yet.

Any advice anyone?

I don't think a tattoo means anything in the grand scheme of things.

Was OW a close friend?

It will take a long time to get the trust back, if at all. Personally, i would never trust him again.

Did your H do any work on himself to find out why he gave himself permission to choose to shag OW?

Did he look into himself to address his issues and character traits that led to the affair?

Until he has done these things to really understand why he had an affair and therefore be able to prevent himself from cheating again, its very hard to rebuild trust as you do not know if he has truly changed.

Also its been only 5-6 weeks - it usually takes the betrayed party far longer than this to recover. It took me 18 months and others on here have taken 2 years.

I think you are in the wrong place to be doing anything right now.

Your hormones and feelings are going to be all over the place from when you were 35 weeks pregnant, through the birth until now.

Try and take each day as it comes. Focus on you and the baby. Any residual time/energy you feel you can spare you can focus on your H if you want to.

I don't think you are going to be able to get yourself on an even keel for weeks/months. Don't beat yourself up about it. Just be kind to yourself.

If your H is serious he should understand this and give you all the time you need.

Personally the tattoo is a shitty gesture so soon after the betrayal he has done to you and I wouldn't hold much stock in it being much more than show right now. Not falling over the OW and letting his dick accidentally fall into her would have been a better thing to do.

I find the tattoo a bit of a pathetic gesture. "Look I got a tattoo, now you have to forgive me!" More the actions of an immature teenager than anything meaningful.

I think it would take a long time to get over this, but personally I could never forgive.

I think you have to forgive for something like this. Both for yourself but also for him.

What he did is shitty but he won't be happy in a relationship where you resent him forever.

For it to work you have to forgive him, at your own pace.

Like someone said above your hormones will still be running wild so give it time.

Sorry didn't mean that to sound like you should do all the work by forgiving him. It's just one aspect of the whole process.

You won't be happy either if you never forgive him. Good luck op

There's loads of threads here with advice on creating a new marriage following someone pissing the old version of it against a wall by choosing to have an affair (because your relationship, if it survives what your husband has done, will never be the same again, it'll be changed, you'll be different people),but all I have to say is your baby is 15 days old !

Your sole focus right now must be on yourself, recovering from birth, settling your hormones and on your new baby. Everything else is irrelevant, if your husband is still interested in intensively working on himself he can do so, you don't need to make any decisions or think about forgiveness or his actions for months yet.

Don't let him taint your memories of the start of your baby's life, you'll never get this time back again, your husband will still be there when you're stronger.

Men suffer from feelings they feel they shouldn't, like being anxious about the impending responsibility, wondering if they will be able to provide, being good enough, feeling jealous and sidelined and unloved.

And of course, the more they squash these feelings (which come from the small boy within), the more they burst out.

Not excusing, just explaining. An affair is a maladaptive coping mechanism which makes everything much, much worse.

I love him so much.

This is so hard.

He did work hard. He still is. I just don't trust him now. Not sure what to do. Couldn't live without him or bear to lose him, but I don't know how to move forward.

I hate what he's done and who we both are now, but I don't hate him.

I don't think it was fear of pending responsibility, we already had 2 DC, I was preg with no 3.

Of course you don't trust home - he betrayed you do clearly doesn't deserve your trust.

But he should not be your focus at the moment. You have a tiny baby, try and cut yourself some slack and concentrate on enjoying your newborn.

I'm interested in why you meet with the OW? Was it so she could corroborate your Hs version of events?

It is bloody hard! Or stories are quite similar sadly. I discovered DH had slept with a former work colleague while away on a business trip when I was 38wks pregnant with DC4.

I was devastated and could not believe my DH was capable of such betrayal, it was just so out of character. We had been married for 10yrs and I had never suspected anything like this before. I just had this strange gut feeling that something was not right. I looked on his iPad and discovered messages between him and the ow. There were hundreds of them. I only skim read a couple until I found confirmation of what had happened. I am glad I didn't read them all.

I have had counselling, read the Shirley Glass book Not just friends and we have talked for hours and hours. DH knows he has no chances left.

If he ever does anything like this again I will leave him and move to where my family live 6 hrs away. He could move there as there are no jobs and he lives in my country not the UK and has no family here.

His reason/excuse for doing what he did is that he didn't think I would care. Our sex life had been a bit neglected, four kids in 7 years (plus 2 miscarriages) has that affect. He met up with the ow in another country while on a business trip, got drunk and ended up on bed with her. Flattered by her attention.

We are now 9 months down the track and things are pretty good. We are getting along better than we have for years. DH is putting in a lot more effort at home, helping out with the DC, housework and cooking more. He is more involved/connected with our family.

I love my DH and really want our marriage to work. I decided to forgive but never forget. I have also broken the rules and sent 2 messages to the ow. The first one to tell her I knew about them and what had happened and she was to stay away and never contact him. The second message I sent one day when I was pissed off just telling her how much I hated her and that I hope someone does to her what she had done to me. No it was not my finest moment! But it did let out a whole load of anger and loathing and I have felt a hell of a lot better ever since. Ow has blocked me on fb so I won't be doing that anymore.

Anyway I know there are so many sad stories like this on MN but I really do think you can go through this and stay married. You just need time and complete honesty from your DH. He will have to prove that he is trustworthy again. There is no easy fix that I have found that is for sure.

I wish you all the best.
(Also my DH got a tattoo too)

I met with OW because, at the risk of outing myself, I will have to see her 3x a day at my children's school, starting soon. Our kids are in the same classes and two of them are best friends. Since the day of discovery, she's hidden away and had other family members, or her H do the school run. She's a coward. Whereas I have been there every day since I found out. I knew she'd have to show back up soon and I didn't know how I'd feel when I saw her. If I burst into tears at the sight of her, wanted to run away, or wanted to scream and rage, I didn't want that to happen in a playground full of children and parents.
In actual fact I just felt numb towards her. I hate her, but felt no anger or hurt towards her. It wasn't her who broke marriage vows to me, lied to me, broke my heart, involved our kids or anything else. She's vile, but she's not the one with a responsibility to me and 3 kids. He is.
All my anger and pain has been at him.
He is trying very hard and being very honest. It's just so hard.

Fourbytwo, that's an encouraging post. Thank you. Congratulations on working things out.

Right now, just prioritise taking care of yourself and the DC's. You are going to need several months for your hormones to settle down and for yourself to feel stronger again.

Once you do, you may find that you see your DH in a new light. After all, he isn't the man you thought he was.

Personally, I could never forgive an affair and would want to get out now while the children were still relatively young.

But I think that you need time first to come to terms with what has happened and to physically recover from your birth.

Congratulations on your newborn

Trust is a funny one. You'll just know when you can, I can't give you a logical reason. It's like knowing you are in love, or knowing someone is lying - 6th sense maybe. My DH had an affair, a proper long term leave the wife kind of thing. It's over now, I can tell from the way he behaves towards me, the way he always calls me when he is away, tells me what hotel he is in, what time his flight is, sends me pictures of the people he is with at work dinners, leaves his phone in the hall where I can see it, doesn't obsessively lock his PC when he is away from it etc etc The effort has to come from your DH, he has to earn your trust.

For your part forgiving, moving on, and not harking back to the affair is important. Focus on your baby (congrats btw), focus on being a couple, and try to be happy. It is hard, believe me I know. I have the occasional stomach falls out of my world moment when something triggers a memory, but they pass. If your DH is sorry, and committed you'll know.

Betty, unless you have lived through an affair you have no idea whether you would forgive one. I always said it would be a deal breaker for me, I am very old fashioned in this respect. I did walk out and leave him, but at the end of the day that wasn't what either of us wanted. People can live through difficulties and come out stronger. With the benefit of hindsight I'd rather a massive rocket of a wake up call and a chance to start over than years of rubbing along in a uninspiring marriage.

I totally agree with both messages by worsestershiresauce. Until you have been in this situation you really don't know how you'd react.

I don't think you can rush this. I don't think you should try to rush this. It's such early days.
I remember your previous thread, I think. It might be a good idea to link it. I remember you suspected something but he lied and lied to you, insinuating that you were paranoid and mad. This was your good friend. He was quite exceptionally cruel.
I hope he is no longer on a pedestal. I admired your response and your steadiness at the time. Please remember you can change your mind and throw him out at any time.

Even when there is no other big Stuff going on, the discovery of an affair is a major crisis which can take several months to absorb the basic impact and start thinking about what can be done to forge a future, whether with or without the straying partner. Add the effects of childbirth and the impact of the associated hormonal bounces, and it must be so unimaginably hard. I am so sorry you are going through this.

Every new mother needs a lot of support. It is OK to accept it from him, and by doing that it does not mean you are committing yourself to reconciliation. It is simply part of regaining your strength, so that one day you will be really ready to look at what you want you want in your life in the future and whether he has any part in it.

Make sure you are getting support from RL friends and your Hv/GP too, and bear in mind the possibility of PND.

He does seem to be displaying positive signs of commitment to you at the moment. Give yourself permission to accept these for now, and consider what they really mean later.

As others have said, it's too early to know whether your marriage can make it, but the advice I'll give you is that it's more important that you make it as an individual. When this happens, it's understandable that the focus is all about saving the marriage, but make sure it's not at the cost of you as a person.

Having been through this myself (although different circumstances) and emerged as a happier woman with a better marriage, a couple of things spring to mind reading yours and others' posts.

This affair was not 5-6 weeks' duration if the woman has been known to him for a long time. In terms of the impact on your marriage, it started the moment he started viewing her as anything other than a school mum/friend of the family. So if things between you were unhappy for a year like you say - that's probably why.

It's important that he knows why he had this affair and that you understand that yourself and don't project why you think he did this. Some things are a given obviously; because he was selfish/entitled and there will have been examples of that in his behaviour before - but if neither of you know why this really happened, it could happen again. Trust comes at the point when you and he know he's a different person now and could never go down this path again. It's too early for him to have changed yet, so mistrust is normal. Critically, he shouldn't trust himself yet either. Some personality habits will still be too deeply ingrained.

I have a feeling that it won't be the affair itself that causes you as a person difficulties going forward. It will be how he treated you while it was going on, especially if posters are right about how he lied and denied for a long time. That behaviour will have caused you damage as a person and you mustn't underestimate it. Because of it, you're at significant risk of depression, so I hope you'll consider your own therapy.

"The problem I have, is obviously trust. Please can anyone advise me on how to regain it. "

You can't regain trust in isolation because it's one of our defence mechanisms... crucial to survival. Someone breaks your trust and does you harm and you very sensibly learn to be far less naive. It's normal. If, in betraying that trust, they have attacked the very core of their relationship with you then you may ultimately never trust them again. Worse, you may come to resent them for the hurt and damage caused. Even worse, you can despise them for all the subsequent sucking up antics.... it all seems rather fake.

That's the lot of being the cheated wife, unfortunately. Whether you split up or stay together, your life has changed far more than you realise. And then you have to ask yourself if you've made the right choice.

Will try to link now. Am by the laptop.

Thanks everyone.

The comment about a massive rocket of a wake up call struck a chord with me, big time. We HAD let things get stale ad were taking each other for granted. That said, I could never have done what he did.

I love him though, very very very much.

Talk/relationships/1603711-Help

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/1603711-Help

That's better. There was a thread that preceded it too...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/1589034-Please-help-Think-am-cracking-up

link

Thank you, Wanking. Haha, fab name!